Growth pangs..and Christmas eve

Exams finally got over after what seemed like eternity. And being truest to my ownself, they failed to meet up to the expections concerning them at any length. Probably that's what kept me from blogging, till almost a week after our fifth semester concluded with itself...that feeling of atonement, inevitable after shrouding a well "dreamt" career, literally for long, under layers of negligence. And amidst amends, I can't wait for this dreadful year to come to an end. No words minced, 2009 made me see through the worst of times, if 'worst' is indeed the superlative term for something so despicable. And its because of a handful of pleasurable phases woven in between this otherwise-horrible-nightmare of 365 days, that made me survive so close to its end. As of now, snippets of Christmas, and whiff of a new year hanging loose in the air, is one of such phases which'll possibly help me make it to yet another week, till the year finally ends.

Its Christmas eve today, and this time, it has been different. I've always refused to believe that anything in this world can match the nostalgia connecting me with my city more than the one encircling Durga Puja. And I can literally go on and on regarding how deadly the feeling can be, to stay away from home during the festive autumn season. Winter, probably, has never been famous for festivities, which literally, comes coupled with idol worship, has it? Its probably a period when people do not dread going out in the Sun lest they might end up within an envelope of sweat. And of course when a New year is imminent, that makes you amnesiac of all the shits life has thrown upon in the year just-spent, letting you see the most of hope and optimism for unfathomable reasons. But, somehow or else, I happened to get nostalgic today. Unexpectedly enough, I found myself missing the days I pined to visit the Park Street of Christmas..the Park Street which lost its vigour somewhere between the tiring miles walked towards college. Or the nights I hung socks in the window, filling them with anticipations and infantile enthusiasm. For some reason, I couldn't help requesting dad today to keep a surprise waiting for me in the window when I wake up this Christmas, followed by earnest persuasions to get atleast something..maybe even a Santa cap..disguised as a surprise. Sadly enough, nothing of that kind happened, and I was nonchalantly handed over a fruit cake on Christmas eve itself, with a sermon that I should try growing up someday. Growing up, well then, possibly happens this way. Its about the processes that robs you of your abilities to wish crazy or letting nostalgia get the better of you. Somewhere deep down, I sincerely wish to voice my hatred against the science behind ageing some other morning, not today. And all the more, yearn to live a grown-up life sometime hence, only to come reversibly back to my normal self. Till then, its Christmas time yet again, and I had to buy a Santa cap for a whopping 45 bucks to satiate myself.

P.S.:- This, for sure, is a lousy post..but somehow couldn't help writing down the same.Merry Christmas to everyone out there.

Resonance...

It has been, albeit a long wait, a fabulous February after all. And the departure of the winter for the first time hasn't been too bothering. And while 'march'ing onto the next 31 days, past the month bygone, it was somewhat a kaleidoscope of mixed feelings that somehow brought equal shares of smile and gloom into the eyes. Strangely enough, its one of such moments when you stop expecting more and thank life for the few simple moments you could gather up to cherish as memories all your life. And it has been one of those times when time had been too kind to spare us from the curses it hurl. The cynosure of it all was our departmental trip to Vizag and the outcome of some four-month-long anticipations regarding it has been undoubtedly one of the best times of our life. It has been one of those times when nature comes calling and joy knows no bounds. When you blend so deep with friendship that the two becomes just about inseparable entities. And the boundless joy you get when a friend calls you family and you find a family away from it. Its a memory, that sadly enough, will never come back to our lives. Memories, we don't wish to perturb and let them stay as they were. Loved, dreamt, created, preserved. And cherished and remembered all through life, with bouts of tears in some far future. For it is very rightly said..

We meet to create memories..

We part to preserve them.

P.S.-Thank you friends..Thank you for bringing such wonderful times in my life.

The closing ceremony of 2008...

It has been long, since you came new,
Bundled with blessings for a countable few
As you depart tonight with the year's last dew
Up comes the morning Sun, with hopes and dreams anew..

.....And as the horizon juggles between sunset and sunrise, night and morning, 2008 and 2009, we refuse to be harsh to the year bidding goodbye. Save for the handful of smiles and blessings it has bestowed, on this last night of its stay with us, we readily fail to notice the blues through which it has made us suffer, the tears it has brought about within us. Though the apprehension over mass killings at random corners of the country fails to get blurred by a coveted mission to the moon, a 50,000 pound valued booker couldn't help the global market crashdown and the first gold medal couldn't moderate our grief over losing Dada, still we owe our bags full of gratitude to the year bygone for the tad bit of goodness it has done for us...a booker prize, an Olympic gold medal, victory of the Democrats...and yet a few unnoticed fleeting smiles it fruitfully brought about for a while or two among us.

On a personal note, it has been less of flower beds and more of thorns, being the most challenging year in my girlhood of eighteen years.
And despite taking him miles away from me, it eventually kept bringing us together.

And as 2008 wraps itself up...we, in our own accord, spare another hope and tear for Mumbai, Guwahati, Delhi, Agartala, Ahmedabad...and unconditionally thank all the Abhinav Bindras and Aravind Adigas around the world who, amidst all this, made an exchange of smiles possible between us.

P.S.- Happy New Year to everyone out there. Have a great year ahead.

Being insane...

Its time again, I suppose, to wander back to old times. And as you rightly guessed...I AM getting nostalgic again. But I can rest assure....to whom it may concern....that this one isn't going to be another account of some morbid yesteryear moments as it has been a number of times so long. For, this diversion from my usual and known-self is due to the sheer optimism presently administering my days. And this really reminds me to laugh out loud in memory of some hilarious incident which happened sometime back in my school days.

We were currently at the 8th or 9th standard and it was a physical training class then, which we mostly, if not always, used to spend giggling and chit-chatting among ourselves...without performing the least hint of any sort of physical training in the literal sense. Hence it was just another so-called-P.T. period to sprawl and laze in an effort to spend the next thirty minutes. But for some forgotten reason, I was too engrossed in running around hither and tither that day and was quite surprisingly on an adventuring spree...unlike my usual lazy self. Now adventure usually referred to hide-an-seek in our case (yes,we were in class 9 then!) , that too specially in a very unconventional place, for a tinge of adventure again. That "special" place had been a hideously bushy area, approximately two-feet wide and about seven yards long, terribly dirty with dense undergrowth, banana trees fouled with betel-leaf spits (yak!), bird droppings, sewage wastes and dung, between the row of darwan's houses and the school boundary just behind. That place used to be one-of-my hot favourites since I loved to and could spend hours running from the basketball ground to that foul place behind the houses, step over all those rubbish and proceed towards a locked gate on the other side of the ground, climb it up and jump onto the basketball ground only to run back and repeat the feat again.

Now that day we were having our regular P.T. class feats, when there came along a tall, belly-protruded old man, clad in pure white dhoti-kurta and carrying a stick, his trademark attire he seemed to have worn all my 13 years in school. We supposed him to be some bigwig of the school's trusty and our awe knew no bounds as we saw him proceeding towards our secret and treasured hide-out between the bushes. I was the first to give out a loud giggle, as I assumed him to share the same attraction for that place like us, and pictured him trying to cross over the locked gate, making a total mess of his dhoti and himself. Not being able to keep myself from witnessing such hilarious incidents, I ran right after him to observe his feat, not paying heed to my friends who were desperately trying to call me back. In fact it surprised me to see their reluctance in missing out such an experience. And as you might have guessed, to my utter dismay, as I peeped in to have a sneak-peek of his activities, I saw that rogue dirtying our hideout ever more, by disposing his loo out there. I was horrified to realise myself watching that man coolly 'performing his feat' in his peaceful 'lavatory' without the slightest hint of someone watching him with horrified eyes, as if he had suddenly turned a monster. I ran from that place as fast as I could, some faint sounds of laughter reaching my eardrums...as I felt too ashamed of not having understood his mission beforehand as my friends did...and resolved not to step into that once-beloved place ever, ever again.

.Full Stop.

I saw those corridors closing on me
Future and past-splitting me apart,
As I got vanquished,battling with time...
And the hour took its due stride.
Banishing me with all its might
From my nest of memories-unmatched,untouched
Making me a part of it all...
Never Again,Never Anymore.
Snatching those away from my lap,
Thousands of memories....given shape through ages
And bolting them behind those doors of steel.
All by themselves-bereft and forlorn.
The door severed the bond between us
I stared at it through countless years
For my memories lie beyond it,locked up...
None to protect,None to care.
It was just then that I heard a footstep...
A voice,a clap,a cheer,a laugh
Then two,then three...then how many more
From behind the door,my haven of love..
I do not belong to that place anymore
For new breaths have ousted us
To take care of some timeless memories,
And build on them-unmatched,untouched.
That was the message from a demure God
To evict the past and pave way for 'now'
And I marooned the place with my tuft of memories
For it was my turn to put a Full Stop.

The nomenclature of memories...

Sometimes you just don't get to call them........give them a name.They turn you off, make you cry.Even manipulate the do's and dont's of your life. But when you set your mind to throw the abstraction out of them and have an encounter face-to-face.........you get into a jiffy.Memories do play such nuisance.

This thought in the first place may seem to be the height of weirdness and absurdity.Precisely coz we rarely get a chance to analyse the activities of that lump of cerebrum inside our egg-heads controlling our actions day and night.Or we don't try to.But don't times come......when you wish to break out of the opacity of past and look forward? When you want to un-live yesterday and live today for tomorrow? When you hate to cry for the one that's over?
They do come...........in every life.Its just that you don't really care to accept that;and stay happy further. And its the nuisances of that same egg-head which makes us afraid to move on.....cry for what's gone.....and expect yesterday to come back!Ridiculous!!

May be the "intelligent" human would ridicule so this truth of life.Its a rare and fortunate chance of a lifetime to come across such an intelligent one.But sorry........we won't ask for a share of his intellect.For we prefer grief over pleasure, and can bargain intelligence for not being mechanical.For we want to stay as the "foolish" human................And breathe.For there's very little space to breathe in this world.


I do agree...................with the "foolish man".
For it has been a year since I left behind some peaceful corner in the outskirts of the city to move towards the most bustling one.I left an unnamed,isolated street leading to a building in white and blue........for another one,much more 'prestigious'.And tried to forget some bunch of promises,memories and laughter.......for a future,hopefully better.

But why,after all these months of college.........a single glimpse of that same building in white and blue brings tears to the eyes?Why a host of unnamed,undefined memories start accumulating,all at a time?Why the mind seeks to go back to the past?

May be the past reverberates within us all the time.........and waits for the opportune moment to come up.For the memories we create with our own hands,refuse to get wiped out so fast.And continues to intersect every point of life.Sometimes they burst open that store-house and get surfaced through the eyes......

And that's the time we feel reluctant to look forward.We stop dreaming about tomorrow and crave for yesterday to come back.And wish to abandon our present and future........................not to un-live,but once again,re-live the past, the one................that's over.

My First Christmas...

It forces the store-house of memories to trace down as far as it can.............faded memories of a chilly December morning.....that one different dawn,when the blanket doesn't seem warm enough to lure about the extra five minutes of nap...the dream of an old bearded man stepping to our bedrooms,clad in red and white....the bedside-socks brimming with glittering presents,restless to get unwrapped....the incessant queues at the church gates...the greenery of the Christmas tree accompanied with balls,bells and 'Bethelem'....the unmatched taste of 'mom-baked' chocolate cake....the queue for fruit cakes before Firpos....holding the fingers of parents amidst the evening glitz of Park Street...the nostalgia of Flurys and Waldorf....dinners at Bar-B-Q and Peter Cat....the Park Street Santa with his inexhaustible stuff of Eclairs.....the sound of our first tantrums on a winter morning.................
Memories of 'A First Christmas' reminisces one the city of his times............

And yet........tracing down my own memory lane,I could never encounter any memories as such.

But I did have a First Christmas.......may be not with parents........but somebody, very special.

That was 2007......................the year of my rebirth.

Thrill had made me too afraid to hold that hand while stepping into the church.
And yet........................too reluctant to leave its grasp.

The noise of the ringing church bells seemed to have mingled with the pounding noise of my heart in a fashion, rhythmic enough to leave an everlasting imprint on my mind.It made me lose my ability to fathom where my senses were taking me along.It was probably not my senses........for I had lost the strength to sense the world anymore.
My world got reduced to a lump of muscle, creating those mixed feelings, and a host of forgotten and unscathed desires.

The evening glitz of the most hip street in the city........seemed to have faded out.For I had become blind........blind out of ecstasy in the touch of that warm grasp.The nostalgia may be still was the same.....as suggested by the crowd before the Flurys gate. But that was still a different Christmas. For that evening, I got my childhood back. That warmth of one pull of arms, grasp of palms and whisper of words got me stuck in a whirlpool of times.........times of a 'seemingly' bygone era, boistering with noises, laughter, memories and tantrums, making me feel once again......like a child.

It made me oblivious of the ups and downs in life.......of what came and what is to come.For I knew nothing of the world, nothing of sorrow, nothing of the hard times in life.........when one looks up seeking a hand,and there's not one to lend that. That one evening dragged me back to my ideal world of dreams, where there's everyone to caress, worry, love and care; the bliss of a world.....which we leave behind with our childhood, and never again get to look back.

The hurricane of the times of past....circled around me with swirling thoughts....and reflected through my eyes......brimming with dreams........and bursting with tears, in the event of their fulfilment in life.

The city continues to glitter with its same, renewed vigour...and so does the one awaited chilly December morning,with its promise of nurturing dreams........and making them come true, on some other wintry dusk.

That was 2007................................the year I found the love of my life.

The year of my rebirth.

An Impassive Farewell...

It was the season of saying goodbyes...To part and cry...Try and forget...And then move on...

And yet,everyone seemed so excited...

Never could I imagine a farewell to be so awaited...Studies almost became secondary as everyone got busy with rehearsals.Even the vice-president had to come all the way to the college field for the 'official' valediction.And we had our pockets pinching with the remaining pocket-money 'coins'; the rest,half-heartedly though,being sacrificed for the same.

It was farewell season at my school too.It had to say goodbye to its father.After all,it was that first principal,who had created and fathered it for 15 years.It must have felt remorse to part from him.
And there was another fresh gang of boys and girls leaving school with eyes full of dreams and tears...It felt nice to become one batch senior.

Everything demanded a change...a fresh start.

Amidst our busy routines in and out of the lab,another sound accompanied the noise of clashing test-tubes and of steam forcing out of the oven.It was the cooing of a little creature stuck in a cage in one corner...an albino rat...our dear li'l Ross.

It had been an inseparable part of the lab...and an "important" member of the department as much as us.In fact it happened to get more attention than the professors.So much so,that we couldn't bear it as something 'inhuman' and gave it a gender recognition.It became "Mr.Ross".

Attending Ross,atleast once in a practical class,had become a habit for all of us.Some loved him,some liked,and some laughed...even some ignored.But Ross was there on everyone's mind.For some,giving feeding him was prior to any practical work.And the rest,with the excuse of work,happened to gather at the corner of the lab only to have a chat with Ross.What more...he was even the cynosure of the sports day march...being the tiniest participant on ground.Clad in his white furs with a blue cap,he proudly went leading us all through the parade with a hoarding behind,written-"ROSS-THE LAB PET".He caught the attention of every single soul on the ground,and maybe he was the reason for our runaway success in that march.We were announced the winners and plannings were started for the departmental picnic.All because of Ross.

Days kept passing on as usual,until one day we came to know..Ross is not well.Somebody demanded a bigger cage for him,but the crude answer was...he has lived his life and is soon going to die.It seemed a severely harsh retort,but authority has to have the last word.Some said he had cancer,some said not.Some wept at the thought of losing him,some seemed to be least bothered.But all got tensed on the whole..Ross was again on everyone's mind...It was then,we came to know that Ross was a girl.Tears turned to laughter and it momentarily made us oblivious of the tension.Ross was forgotten.

It was yet another morning we gathered at the departmental lab..all too busy with their work.Maybe it was the first day no one noticed Ross.It was the lab assistant to come up..in an unsure state of mind..and convey the news to us.

Ross has died.

Suddenly there were cries of disbelief throughout the lab.Everyone rushed towards the cage in one corner.Ross was still there..eyes closed..and hundreds of insects strewn all over her.Some couldn't accept the fact,and said she was having a nap.May be she was.But this one won't break and was going to last.Forever.

It was some one hour later that we somehow managed to get time out,for bidding a last farewell to Ross.On reaching the corner,we saw no sign of Ross.Or her cage.A hope sprang up.Maybe she was alive.And had been taken to the vet.Curious eyes searched her all through the lab..before they fell on the cage.The lab assistant was cleaning it once and for all.Our queries got answered by the pointing of a finger towards the terrace.Ross was getting buried by some seniors.Our rush to the terrace for one final sight was of no avail...Ross was already deep beneath the earth.......

Days have kept passing by the same way since then.The test tubes still clash and break..and the hot-air oven continues to get perturbed by the steam.We are still busy with our rehearsals for the farewell.And talks are being made for bringing two more rats in the lab for some research work.This time the cages should be larger.And there are plans for the picnic..And for sports day,next year.Amidst our busy routines,we still walk in and out of the lab.We have again tried and forgotten...and then moved on...but Ross will possibly stay in our minds,atleast for some long.Some will cry,some will lament...and yet some will be least bothered.But on the whole,may be we will always miss Ross.................Or may be not.